July 10, 2020 – Reputed Chicago bookmaker Dominic (The Bookie Butcher) Poeta was indicted by the feds for running a sports betting operation and filing a false tax return this week, 12 years removed from being named in a federal civil lawsuit which claiming he accepted close to a million bucks in gambling debts owed to him. Poeta, 63, owns Poeta’s Italian Market in Highwood, Illinois. He resides in Highland Park and faces up to three years in prison if convicted in his current case. In 2008, Poeta was accused of taking $870,000 in checks for payment on bets from Windy City swindler Adam Resnick. When questioned by Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass, Poeta claimed he was simply a “go-between,” for Resnick, who defrauded and collapsed a local bank by stealing $10,000,000 in a check-kiting scam. Enacting his Fifth Amendment rights under oath in the civil case, he was ordered to pay the $870k back to the federal government in restitution. The 48-year old Resnick was betting a million dollars a game in the early 2000s through sports books in Las Vegas brokered by Poeta. Per the 2008 civil case, Resnick wagered $1.5 million on a 2002 NBA Finals game between the L.A. Lakers and the New Jersey Nets. Resnick authored the 2007 memoir Bust: How I Gambled & Lost A Fortune, Brought Down A Bank & Lived To Tell About It and did three years behind bars for his check-kiting ring. A character named “Lucky Petrelli” in the book is based on Poeta.
